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Most Useful Photoshop Tricks of All Time
These super-useful, often-unknown, tricks will make your Photoshop workflow twice as fast. Vote for the best ones.
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11.
Nudge a Selection by 10px
We all know the arrow keys are great for precisely positioning selected elements, but sometimes nudging elements 1-pixel at a time is too slow. Hold down shift and press an arrow key to move the selected element by 10 pixels at a time. Comes in very handy when positioning buttons.
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12.
Change the Grid Size Faster
When you're working with layouts that require exact measurements, the grid is a very handy function. Unfortunately, changing the grid's size can be a pain in the butt if you're used to going through Edit >> Preferences >> Guides, Grids, & Slices. Instead, just double-click on the Ruler to open the Preferences window and select the Guide, Grids, & Slices tab.
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13.
Enter Free Transform Mode Quickly
Transforming selected elements is a critical task for any seasoned Photoshoper, but getting there via Edit >> Transform is too time consuming. Instead, try CTRL+T. You can also do a quick Horizontal or Vertical flip by hitting CTRL+T, right-clicking inside your selection, and choosing Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical from the context menu. Much easier than the alternative.
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14.
Fade an Applied Filter Retroactively
Photoshop comes with a lot of cool filters, but have you ever applied a filter and thought to yourself, "That's just a little too strong?" Of course! But instead of hitting undo and reapplying the filter, there's an easier way to solve this problem. Simply hit CTRL+SHIFT+F after applying a filter to bring up the Fade window. From there you can retroactively dial back the filter's opacity or even change its blending mode.
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15.
Quickly Create & Destroy Guides
Guides are great for aligning elements exactly as your layout requires, but creating a new guide can be a hassle. Ordinarily its done by going to View >> Create New Guide. Instead of doing that, try this. Click inside the Ruler and drag in towards your image. Viola! A new guide magically appears. You can likewise destroy guide just as easily. Just select the Move tool first and drag the guide off-screen.
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16.
Understanding Magic Wand Tolerance
The Magic Wand is an awesome tool for selecting large areas of like-colored pixels, but are you sure you understand how it works? Specifically, did you know the oh-so-vital Tolerance setting ranges from 0-255?! That's right, it's not 0-100 like Opacity because now your dealing with color ranges. So, if you want a loose Magic Wand, and sometime you do, crank up the tolerance past 100.
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17.
Quickly Moving Elements Between Open Files
Do you work with multiple Photoshop files at once? If you're designing anything serious, chances are yes, and sometimes you'll want to quickly move elements from one open file to another. Unfortunately, it's not immediately evident how this can be done. The best way is to duplicate the layer you wish to move and select a new Document as the Destination. This way, the layer shows up in a new open file.
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